1947
1946 1947 1948 Events * Saskatchewan, under Premier Tommy Douglas, becomes first Canadian province to provide public, universal hospital insurance. Other Canadian provinces soon follow. * Britain evacuates 75,000 British personnel and dependents from Palestine. * War in Palestine sends first wave of Palestinian refugees to Lebanon. * 10,440 prisoners are reported as escaping from the Soviet Gulag, but only 1,500 escapees are reported captured. * Japanese parliament passes The Child Welfare Law. * U.S. Congress passes Taft-Hartley Act; Democratic President Harry S. Truman vetoes the anti-working class legislation but Republican majority overrides his veto. The law undermines labor union organizing efforts outside the industrial northeast. * Heinz Brücher is appointed as a biology professor at the University of Tucuman. Timeline January * January 8: Cao Dai leaders sign agreement with French colonial officials pledging their "loyal collaboration." * January 24: Physicist and activist Michio Kaku 加來 紀雄 is born. February * February 11: Radio celeb Walter Winchell tells America that Lucky Luciano is sonsorting with known criminals and crooked Cuban politicians in Havana, including Meyer Lansky, Senator Eduardo Suarez Rivas and Congressman Indalecio Pertierra. * February 18: UK refers Palestine Question to the UN. March * March 12: Truman Doctrine is announced. The Cold War is off to an incredible start. * March 12: Mitt Romney is born in Detroit Michigan, although it is not his "home town." * March 24: The 22nd Amendment is passed by Congress. April * April 8: Nominations of Edgar Witt, William Holt and Louis O'Marr as the first three members of the Indian Claims Commission sail through Senate approval. None is a Native American and all will oppose giving Native Americans more than a tiny fraction of nthe value stolen from them. * April 15: Jackie Robinson plays in a baseball game for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball's color barrier. * April 15: Stern Gang almost blows up the Colonial Office in Whitehall. Timer fails to detonate the dynamite. * April 28: Operation Vistula (Akcja Wisła) begins. By July 31, 140,000 Polish authorities will have rounded up and transferred 140,000 ethnic Ukrainians in Southeastern Poland, many Eastern Orthodox, to the new territories annexed from Germany. May * U.S. Pres. Harry S. Truman signs act launching the Truman Doctrine: $400 million in military and economic aid to Turkey and Greece. June * June 2: Mark Rudd is born in Irvington, New Jersey. * June 3: Partition Plan for India is released. * June 5: U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall delivers Marshall Plan speech at Harvard University. * June 24: Pilot Kenneth Arnold makes first reported sighting of what are thereafter called "flying saucers". July * July 8: Crash of a "flying saucer" reported in Roswell, New Mexico by Maj. William M. "Mac" Brazel. August * August 20: Convertibility of the British pound is suspended. * August 31: Second free general election in liberated Hungary: : Political party and Seats in Parliament :: Communist Party - 100 :: Smallholders - 68 :: Social Democrats - 67 :: National Peasant Government Front - 36 :: Democratic People's Party - 60 :: Hungarian Independent Party - 49 :: Independent Hungarian Democratic Party - 18 :: Others - 13 September * September: Over the objections of the Soviet Union, the U.S. persuades the United Nations to establish the United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTOK) to supervise elections for a new provisional government. * September 8: UNSCOP recommendations on the future of Palestine are published. October * October 26: Future First Lady, Democrartic New York Senator and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is born in Chicago, Illinois. * October 29: UN General Assembly passes resolution on the partition of Palestine into Palestinian and Jewish states. November * November 15: Future New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is born in Pasadena, California. * November 29: United Nations General Assembly votes 33 (including America and the Soviet Union) to 13, with 10 abstentions (including Britain), to partition the nation of Palestine between its Jewish and Arab inhabitants. The Jews have only 33% of the population and legally own less than 6% of the land but receibe 56.4% of the territory. Palestine as an national entity disappears and all that is left is Israel and Jordan. December * December 1: Haganah-Czechoslovak arms agreement made with the permission of Moscow. * December 11-31: Haganah atrocity in the Palestinian village of Balad al-Shayak, killing 14 civilians. Ten of the murdered are children and 3 are women. * December 13: The Irgun kills 16 Arabs and wounds 67 more in bombings in Jaffa and Jerusalem. * December 19: National Security Council holds its first meeting and decides on an all-out covert psych-war against the Soviet Union. * December 30: Irgun bombing kills 6 Arans and wounds 50 more at the gate of the Haifa Oil Refinery.